Exploring Local Culture and Traditions Through Art Activities and Play in a Children’s Museum

Abstract

This chapter discusses how children’s museums can contribute to children’s play and their experience with local culture and traditions through art activities like “museum theatre” and drawing. Children’s agency is part of their way of exploring museums, framed as a cultural process within the society the child develops. Drawing on a sociocultural and an arts-based perspective, this study aims to explore how cultural artefacts contribute to young children’s meaning making of local culture and traditions in the context of Northern Norway. The study took place in the Children’s Museum in Midt-Troms and the exhibition Midt-Troms in Miniature. The authors provide insights into ways children play and how they experience museum artefacts. Particularly, the study explores how children engage with the affordances of the museum environment, how they participate in museum theatre and how they express themself through drawing. Values of local traditions and artefacts are related to children’s early knowledge and learning for global citizenship. The methodological approach contains of participatory observation and arts-based research approaches, following a group of nine children at a children’s museum. This study suggests that children’s museums are arenas for children to connect with local culture and traditions through exploration, play, museum theatre and drawing with different materials. Arts-based approaches and arts-based education contribute to expanding children’s experiences in different contexts and spaces in order to address challenges and possibilities for innovative cultural and aesthetic expressions. The findings suggest new ways and approaches for local spaces to shape children’s experiences of local cultural aspects such as the Sámi culture. A sense of belonging in the local community could result with the Children’s Museum as a facilitator for processes of social and cultural cultivation.